Bottas: What’s most impressive is how rarely Zhou is wrong

At a press conference in Singapore, Valtteri Bottas commented on the Alfa Romeo team’s decision to extend the contract with Guanyu Zhou. The Finnish rider thinks his young teammate for a debutant has done all the tasks well and deserves a place in the World Championship.

Valtteri Bottas: “I think it’s good news because by working with him and being his partner I can say that he really deserves a place in the team and in general in Formula 1. For his age and experience he is a real mature professional In addition, Zhou has learned a lot this year, his pace in qualifying is gradually increasing, the same can be said about the pace he shows in the races, besides he makes almost no mistakes.

I am sure that he will continue to develop in the future and show better and better results. But what impresses me most is how rarely he makes a mistake, although of course Zhou is under a lot of external pressure as he is the first Chinese driver in Formula 1, but he shows a very correct approach to things.

For various reasons, Bottas failed to earn points in six stages in a row, but he hopes for a more successful performance in Singapore: “I hope so, although it is always difficult to make predictions. We have not prepared any major innovations for this phase, only slightly improved a number of machine components.

This track requires almost the maximum possible downforce, so I don’t know yet how our C42 will perform. But I hope everything will be fine because I haven’t earned any points in a long time – both due to retirement and due to penalties. That’s why I really hope to get back into good shape, especially in qualifying, because it’s clear that at this track on Saturday you have to show a good result if you want to earn points on Sunday.

I think the information gathered during the race weekends in Monaco and Baku will help us a lot. We came up with a lot then and now I will try to outperform in those phases.